Could Sussex lose its Marks & Spencer outlets as retailer plans to close one in four of its larger stores?

Sixty-seven ‘full-line stores’, which sell clothes, food and hardware, will close by early 2028, reducing the number of overall outlets from 247 to 180.

M&S also announced the future opening of 104 new Simply Food stores across the country. The retailer plans to have 420 of the shops open in the next five years.

The move to switch to having more smaller food shops and fewer larger department stores is expected to save M&S more than £300m in rent, the company said in its presentation.

It has been reported that the majority of the closures will be in old high street locations, and not in city centres with office populations.

M&S chief executive Stuart Machin said: "We are creating a fit-for-the-future store estate, with shops in great locations, that help our customers shop the way they want to.

"We're seeing strong performances from our recently relocated stores and this gives us the confidence to go faster in our rotation plans, while at the same time investing in bigger and better food stores."

A second M&S spokesperson added: "The goal to rotate the estate to higher quality new space remains the same, but our ambition is to go faster."

M&S did not release information on which locations or how many jobs would be affected by the plans.

Sussex has 24 M&S stores located across the county, including Worthing, Horsham, Chichester, Brighton, Hastings and Eastbourne.